Education gender gap widens
By Anwar Elshamy
Although describing it as a “positive and healthy social change”, a study warned against the growing gender gap favouring Qatari females in secondary and higher education, saying that such disparity should be examined.
The Qatar Populations 2009 Study, conducted by the Permanent Population Committee, showed that the education gender gap which had been in favour of men for a long time was recently reversed as Qatari women are now more likely to enroll in universities than men.
For each 100 male students enrolled in higher education in 2005-2006, a total of 194 females joined the same level, according to the study.
“This is unprecedented situation referring to a social transformation that took place in the community in terms of women empowerment in education. It is a desired and a recommended factor for development,” the study said.
However, the study recommended that further surveys should be conducted to examine the reasons behind the declining number of males joining university and secondary education.
“No real development can be achieved with a widening gender gap whether in favour of female or males,” the study concluded.
About the gender gap in secondary education, the study showed that for each 100 male students there were 108 females in 2007.
The study also criticised what it called gaps in the Qatari school curriculum in terms of the teaching methods as well as the theoretical approaches.
However, it hailed the growing education spending per capita as a positive change, saying it heralded a “significant development in the country’s education system”.
“Education spending per capita increased from QR201 in 1991 to 248 in 2004 to jump to more than QR13,000 in 2008,” the study added.
About the common diseases, the study warned that Qatar was witnessing a swift shift from the infectious diseases stage to chronic diseases, saying that the significant drop in infectious diseases coincided with a rise in lifestyle-related diseases. The study identified diabetes, hypertension and coronary heart diseases as the most prevalent diseases in the country, blaming the rise on non-communicable diseases on lifestyle attitudes including a reduced physical activity, smoking, obesity, unhealthy diet, and hereditary.
“The spread of infectious diseases has been very slow during the past few years thanks to the preventive measures taken by the medical authorities. While measles infections dropped five times during the last decade, there was only one TB death-related case from 2004 to 2007,” the study said.
About marriages between close relatives among Qataris, the study said although there was a decline in such a trend, some 43% of women who married during 2007 were found to be “close relatives” to their husbands.
On polygamy, the study said the social trend was still “relatively spread” among Qatari men with 7.5% of marriage contracts made during 2007 were for husbands who were taking another wife.

Qatar’s divorce rate is escalating at an alarming rate, official statistics indicate.
A total of 982 couples ended their marriage in the first 11 months of this year, and the figure by the end of the December is expected to cross the 1,000 mark, according to the figures released by the Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA). The figure means that around 80 couples get divorced every month, and an average of almost three every day. Last year, the courts recorded 939 divorces.

The figures show that of the 982 divorce cases this year, 655 involved Qatari women, compared with 327 non-Qatari women.

The months of April, May and June witnessed the highest numbers of splits, with 127 women divorced in May, 107 in June and 101 women in April, the daily The Peninsula reported.

Qatar had 496 divorce cases in 1999, but the figure has grown steadily over the past decade, reaching 997 in 2007 when 721 Qatari nationals and 276 non-Qataris getting divorced. The figure went slightly down in 2008 with 939 cases.

The total number of marriages celebrated this year in the first 11 months in Qatar was 2,917.